Buckwheat wrote:The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating.

This is to be expected when we are at a tiny 396.80 ppm, while it was almost as high as 7,000ppm before. Earth can't be so unbalanced to maintain unnaturally LOW levels of CO2 and temperature.

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

Dan74 wrote:PS Our contribution is far from nothing. It is consistent, increasing and significant.

0.0014664% is very significant...

Yes, it is. You are not listening. And I'm not interesting in continuing. Believe what you wish, Alex. The information is out there. Kim's provided it, Buckwheat's provided it and I've linked some good stuff too. If people actually want to understand, they can. And if they just want to spout ill-informed nonsense, they can too. It's a free world!

Buckwheat wrote:I am saying this: do you want human activity to an abrupt shock to the natural system, or should we live in harmony with the global ecosystem that is the foundation for our lives on Earth? Yes, there have been 5 mass extinction events in 600 million years since the Cambrian explosion. There is also a mass extinction event in the 10,000 years since humans started congregating into larger societies.

What do you propose? That we go to pre-industrial world? DO you know what that means? Have you lived in a world without trucks and cars? How will you feed cities with multi-millions of people living in them?

Right, because the only options are to continue down our globally suicidal path, or resort to hunter-gatherer society.

There is a third option: We carefully consider our impacts on the globe (everything we do is done by 7 billion other people) and try to reduce them. This means walking instead of driving. This means forgoing the social reward of a job that feeds on pollution for a humble job that sustains life efficiently. These are indeed hard choices, but that is no excuse to do nothing.

7000 ppm was over 500 million years ago, and if memory serves, during the Cambrian period, the biological forefront was to become multi-cellular. The life that existed at that time was radically different than the current biome.

Even looking at the age of dinosaurs, when CO2 levels were in the low thousands, global temperatures were much higher than today. So much so, that if we suddenly revert back to those conditions, there would be a mass extinction event. Do you want to live through the end of the human race?

If we want to look at life on Earth at the time scale of hundreds of millions of years, then the discussion is totally different. In a few hundred million years, humans will likely be extinct, and our discussion are moot. But if we even want to survive a few hundred more years, we need to address the pressing issue of greenhouse gas emissions.

Buckwheat wrote:There is a third option: We carefully consider our impacts on the globe (everything we do is done by 7 billion other people) and try to reduce them. This means walking instead of driving. This means forgoing the social reward of a job that feeds on pollution for a humble job that sustains life efficiently. These are indeed hard choices, but that is no excuse to do nothing.

What should a person living in COLD climate do? Ever tried to walk many miles to work when it is freezing (below - 10F) outside?

Do you realize HOW the food gets to the supermarket? Large trucks deliver it nearly daily to shops in the city. Without using gasoline, how do you expect large cities to be fed?

Buckwheat wrote:... the only options are to continue down our globally suicidal path, or resort to hunter-gatherer society.

Times are different. Do you want many people to die off in order for us to maintain low enough population to live like hunter gatherers?

Last edited by Alex123 on Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

7000 ppm was over 500 million years ago, and if memory serves, during the Cambrian period, the biological forefront was to become multi-cellular. The life that existed at that time was radically different than the current biome.

Even looking at the age of dinosaurs, when CO2 levels were in the low thousands, global temperatures were much higher than today. So much so, that if we suddenly revert back to those conditions, there would be a mass extinction event. Do you want to live through the end of the human race?

The Climate doesn't "care" about Humans, dinosaurs, or multi-cellular organisms. It is what it is and life adapts (or doesn't) to it. My point that when we consider the Overall picture, today's CO2 and temperature are indeed extreme. Too low. For millions of years the levels were much higher, and that is more usual.Today's levels are the unusually low ones.

And natural climate is still much more powerful than us. Volcano eruptions can cool the planet (hopefully not into another Ice Age). So we are not doomed.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines June 15, 1991, an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and ash particles blasted more than 12 miles (20 km) high into the atmosphere. The eruption caused widespread destruction and loss of human life. Gases and solids injected into the stratosphere circled the globe for three weeks. Volcanic eruptions of this magnitude can impact global climate, reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, lowering temperatures in the troposphere, and changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The extent to which this occurs is an ongoing debate.

Large-scale volcanic activity may last only a few days, but the massive outpouring of gases and ash can influence climate patterns for years. Sulfuric gases convert to sulfate aerosols, sub-micron droplets containing about 75 percent sulfuric acid. Following eruptions, these aerosol particles can linger as long as three to four years in the stratosphere.http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Volcano/

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

Dan74 wrote:Yes, it is. You are not listening. And I'm not interesting in continuing. Believe what you wish, Alex

I've used Kim's information and it made no sense when I plugged in the numbers. It is not the matter of belief, but of analyzing and checking the available data.

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

Alex123 wrote:I've used Kim's information and it made no sense when I plugged in the numbers. It is not the matter of belief, but of analyzing and checking the available data.

No, it's not. You have made your own formulas and your own models to explain things that you don't understand. And it's okay to not understand - I don't really get a lot of this stuff either - but it's not okay to assume that you can make up your own science here. We have repeatedly pointed out the errors you are making here, kindly I hope, but you are not listening.

Gain and loss, status and disgrace, censure and praise, pleasure and pain:these conditions among human beings are inconstant,impermanent, subject to change.

LonesomeYogurt wrote:No, it's not. You have made your own formulas and your own models to explain things that you don't understand.

None of what I've said is totally my own. I did my own research and use common sources of information.

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

I have hesitated to 'come out' properly here, but I think I can safely do so, and not get pilloried for it. We are all friends in the Dhamma after all, and that surely overrides any difference of opinion we might have regarding AGW.

I was one of the first people i know to jump on board when it first became popular to be concerned about this issue. I believed in it and was almost losing sleep over it. That is because I have loved this beautiful and wondrous planet we live on, with it's amazing ecosystems and biodiversity, since I was a little kid, and I still do. Although unemployed at the time, I went on to a '100% wind, solar and hydro electricity plan' where, by paying a bit more for my power, they would invest more in these technologies.

But over the years I also began to read some disturbing things. That the measuring stations are in locations where one would expect higher temperatures, for example, thus skewing the data. That most of the climate research is basically computer modelling and not 'hard' science at all. Plus the way that the mainstream media taints anyone who expresses doubt about it with the emotive term, 'denier' with it's implications - we all know what they are hinting at with that term, I think. And does everyone remember how there was this incident where scientists did not get the data that they wanted, and so simply changed it to suit themselves? And we trust these people?

I still live as sustainably I can, by the way. I try to organise life so there is as little driving as possible, I buy organic when I can afford it, and I would love some solar panels (if only I could afford them). But I think that the real issues are the destruction of forests and ecosystems, the erosion of the topsoil, pollution of the biosphere with pesticides, nanoparticles, and genetically modified organisms, the destruction of clean underground water by fracking...take your pick, we have a lot of real issues to work on, and these are the things I will continue to try to raise awareness of. As for CO2, we've had periods in Earth's history when the concentrations were MUCH higher than they are today; it's being used as a 'scapegoat' to distract the masses from those other, truly urgent issues I mentioned, I believe. Where is the alarm about GMO's here? Anyone concerned about the growing land-mass made of plastic in the Pacific? Did the 'water' coming out of your tap catch on fire lately, due to nearby fracking? These are verifiable concerns, not just based on computer modelling.

Fukushima crisis has not being solved yet. Huge amount of radioactive water is being pumped into Pacific Ocean. IMHO it is MUCH more serious than carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 does not cause cancer or birth defects. Man made radiation (cesium 134,137, etc) contributes to cancer. CO2 is naturally produced. Nuclear isotopes/waste is not. Here I believe is the danger.

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

7000 ppm was over 500 million years ago, and if memory serves, during the Cambrian period, the biological forefront was to become multi-cellular. The life that existed at that time was radically different than the current biome.

Even looking at the age of dinosaurs, when CO2 levels were in the low thousands, global temperatures were much higher than today. So much so, that if we suddenly revert back to those conditions, there would be a mass extinction event. Do you want to live through the end of the human race?

The Climate doesn't "care" about Humans, dinosaurs, or multi-cellular organisms. It is what it is and life adapts (or doesn't) to it. My point that when we consider the Overall picture, today's CO2 and temperature are indeed extreme. Too low. For millions of years the levels were much higher, and that is more usual.Today's levels are the unusually low ones.

And natural climate is still much more powerful than us. Volcano eruptions can cool the planet (hopefully not into another Ice Age). So we are not doomed.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines June 15, 1991, an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and ash particles blasted more than 12 miles (20 km) high into the atmosphere. The eruption caused widespread destruction and loss of human life. Gases and solids injected into the stratosphere circled the globe for three weeks. Volcanic eruptions of this magnitude can impact global climate, reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, lowering temperatures in the troposphere, and changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The extent to which this occurs is an ongoing debate.

Large-scale volcanic activity may last only a few days, but the massive outpouring of gases and ash can influence climate patterns for years. Sulfuric gases convert to sulfate aerosols, sub-micron droplets containing about 75 percent sulfuric acid. Following eruptions, these aerosol particles can linger as long as three to four years in the stratosphere.http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Volcano/

Interestingly, exhaust particulate from diesel powered vehicles acts in the same manner as volcanic particulate and adds to global cooling. It's a shame that this same particulate contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as alpha-nitro-pyrene which is a powerful human carcinogen. Why aren't the climatologists whining about that? Guess CO2 trumps carcinogens and radiological wastes from Japan.

May all beings find peace, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy.

What Makes an Elder? :A head of gray hairs doesn't mean one's an elder. Advanced in years, one's called an old fool.But one in whom there is truth, restraint, rectitude, gentleness,self-control, he's called an elder, his impurities disgorged, enlightened.-Dhammpada, 19, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Surveys of weather stations in the USA have indicated that some of them are not sited as well as they could be. This calls into question the quality of their readings.

However, when processing their data, the organisations which collect the readings take into account any local heating or cooling effects, such as might be caused by a weather station being located near buildings or large areas of tarmac. This is done, for instance, by weighting (adjusting) readings after comparing them against those from more rural weather stations nearby.

More importantly, for the purpose of establishing a temperature trend, the relative level of single readings is less important than whether the pattern of all readings from all stations taken together is increasing, decreasing or staying the same from year to year. Furthermore, since this question was first raised, research has established that any error that can be attributed to poor siting of weather stations is not enough to produce a significant variation in the overall warming trend being observed.

It's also vital to realise that warnings of a warming trend -- and hence Climate Change -- are not based simply on ground level temperature records. Other completely independent temperature data compiled from weather balloons, satellite measurements, and from sea and ocean temperature records, also tell a remarkably similar warming story.

More importantly, for the purpose of establishing a temperature trend, the relative level of single readings is less important than whether the pattern of all readings from all stations taken together is increasing, decreasing or staying the same from year to year.

Thanks Dan, but this paragraph above concerns me. We need more accuracy, imo. Actual numbers do matter, not just 'trends'! I do not understand why temperature measuring devices could not be spread out more evenly over the planet. But even then, it's a pretty big planet, with lots of climatic variations. How could we ever be sure that overall the Earth's total surface temperature was increasing? Or that the trend being observed from the stations they do have, isn't just natural variation? Or that it's human-released CO2 that is the primary culprit (I say human *released* because, we did not create it - we are simply releasing back into the atmosphere, what the prehistoric plants had originally absorbed from it millions of years ago, when the oil and coal deposits were formed. I actually wonder why no-one ever mentions that. I'm not even a scientist, and I figured that out.

Now, should we stop burning coal and oil anyway, and move towards alternatives (but not nuclear)? Yes, because they are also highly polluting and environmentally destructive in other ways. But that's another story.

manas wrote:I have hesitated to 'come out' properly here, but I think I can safely do so, and not get pilloried for it. We are all friends in the Dhamma after all, and that surely overrides any difference of opinion we might have regarding AGW.

Hi, Manas, Thanks for making your position clear.

manas wrote:But over the years I also began to read some disturbing things. (1) That the measuring stations are in locations where one would expect higher temperatures, for example, thus skewing the data. (2) That most of the climate research is basically computer modelling and not 'hard' science at all. [and later: These are verifiable concerns, not just based on computer modelling. ](3) Plus the way that the mainstream media taints anyone who expresses doubt about it with the emotive term, 'denier' with it's implications - we all know what they are hinting at with that term, I think. (4) And does everyone remember how there was this incident where scientists did not get the data that they wanted, and so simply changed it to suit themselves? And we trust these people?

manas wrote:I still live as sustainably I can, by the way. I try to organise life so there is as little driving as possible, I buy organic when I can afford it, and I would love some solar panels (if only I could afford them).

Great!

manas wrote:But I think that the real issues are the destruction of forests and ecosystems, the erosion of the topsoil, pollution of the biosphere with pesticides, nanoparticles, and genetically modified organisms, the destruction of clean underground water by fracking...take your pick, we have a lot of real issues to work on, and these are the things I will continue to try to raise awareness of. As for CO2, we've had periods in Earth's history when the concentrations were MUCH higher than they are today; it's being used as a 'scapegoat' to distract the masses from those other, truly urgent issues I mentioned, I believe. Where is the alarm about GMO's here? Anyone concerned about the growing land-mass made of plastic in the Pacific? Did the 'water' coming out of your tap catch on fire lately, due to nearby fracking? Metta.

So many problems, so little time! And that is a genuine, serious problem. All we can do is put our efforts where we see the greatest need. Some can only be addressed locally so it's good to get out and join (e.g.) a riverbank cleanup. Others can be addressed politically - Get-Up, Avaaz, Earth Hour, etc. Go for it! But we can't ignore AGW. It is already driving extreme weather events - hurricane Sandy and others, Pakistan floods, etc - and the slower changes are driving species to extinction regardless of pollution, GMO's, etc.

The reason people doubt AGW is because when one analyzes the data and what warms the earth or doesn't, then AGW makes no sense. I am all for the environment.

We also can't rely on simple linear models and ideas that "CO2 levels went up by 2 points this and that year, it means that it will continue going up 2 points every year so that in 50 years it will be 100ppm higher".

A volcano eruption or some other natural event can easily bring down CO2 levels.

Also, Manas made a very interesting point. Thank you. We don't produce CO2 out of nothing. We release it back into the atmosphere. So there is limited amount of CO2. We are not making any more CO2 than there naturally can be.

So when Earth warms up, more water evaporates from Ocean and more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Is this relationship between CO2 and temperature? Temperature affects CO2 levels...

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

So if many people believe it, it is true? BTW, 24 studies DO reject AGW. So at best, AGW is not proven. I wonder the quality about those 13,950 articles...

"Life is a struggle. Life will throw curveballs at you, it will humble you, it will attempt to break you down. And just when you think things are starting to look up, life will smack you back down with ruthless indifference..."

When you strip away all the rhetoric, this is really what it boils down to. People trying to save an impermanent thing. Deep emotional attachment that some have to trying to save the planet. For some this becomes some kind of twisted green anti-humanism, that advocates murder via abortions for population control, suffering via energy poverty and other unwholesome things.

No matter what we do, our planet will one day die and humans will die out or evolve to something else. Eventually we will come to a Dhamma ending age too. I think it better to focus on my practice than waste time and effort trying to save something that is destine to die. I may not be able to save the planet, but I do have a good chance at awakening and saving this one being here from the cycle of suffering.

This is why I have generally tried to avoid these debates recently and focus on my practice.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis

When you strip away all the rhetoric, this is really what it boils down to.

Perhaps consider these sorts of efforts to be an act of dana for future generations in order that they might have a place (i.e. planet) for Dhamma practice (to say nothing of having a place, at all). Many monks and nuns in the suttas did things "out of compassion for future generations", so I fail to understand how making changes to unsustainable lifestyles while educating ones fellow humans in this matter feels at odds, to you, with your individual Dhamma practice. Where is the generosity, the compassion for others both now and in the future?

The inevitability of anicca is hardly warrant for apathy - after all, the continuity of the Dhamma as a teaching has causes and conditions, per the suttas... it isn't fated to die off at a certain time...

Frankly, it does not all boil down to saving an orbiting rock. Such rhetoric is out of place.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]

When you strip away all the rhetoric, this is really what it boils down to.

Perhaps consider these sorts of efforts to be an act of dana for future generations in order that they might have a place (i.e. planet) for Dhamma practice (to say nothing of having a place, at all). Many monks and nuns in the suttas did things "out of compassion for future generations", so I fail to understand how making changes to unsustainable lifestyles while educating ones fellow humans in this matter feels at odds, to you, with your individual Dhamma practice. Where is the generosity, the compassion for others both now and in the future?

The inevitability of anicca is hardly warrant for apathy - after all, the continuity of the Dhamma as a teaching has causes and conditions, per the suttas... it isn't fated to die off at a certain time...

Frankly, it does not all boil down to saving an orbiting rock. Such rhetoric is out of place.

How can we expect to save ourselves if our choices are motivated by self-interest and self-gratification rather than cherishing all beings, as the Buddha urged us?